Not A Focus Group In The Bunch - Yay!

I just came back from an MRIA event where the speaker said he used extensive qualitative research to reposition Barilla, a leading brand of Italian pasta in America. Barilla had a seemingly unlimited budget and the research supplier threw just about every qualitative technique in the book at the study with the exception of - you guessed it Focus Groups.

I have to say as a psychotherapist-researcher this makes me very proud. When the objective is repositioning, or any branding work really, we must get respondents out of their head and get at deeply held emotions and opinions. To that end, to reposition Barilla, the research company conducted depth interviews lasting four hours, memory regression interviews, ethnographic interviews, on-site interviews and opinion leader interviews. Not a single focus group in the bunch, and I am proud. Focus groups produce head/logical/bullshit responses, and to take respondents out of their heads in a focus group requires a significant effort. In a two hour session, you would be lucky if five minutes were real emotions or opinions, and chances are the moderator would have to try very hard to get that five minutes (either that or it would just happen out of sheer luck).

What struck me most, however, was that during his research, the speaker himself developed a strong passion for Italy, Italian Food and the participants in his study. In Gestalt Therapy terms, he made what we call "contact" with his participants. Contact, in Gestalt Therapy, is kind of the be-all-and-end-all of human behaviour. Contact is basically a raw, honest and open interaction that occurs between two people where there is a confluence of beings, but at the same time an awareness of individuality that works as as an invisible "give-and-take" mechanism during the exchange. The end result of contact is a changed perspective in both individuals. It need not be a change in opinion of the person with whom you make contact, it may be another change (e.g. how one views themselves, or how one views life in general), but the point is that something has shifted in both participants. Contact cannot be "forced" - it just happens. Certain conditions are more condusive to contact, such as the type of research this individual did - with most of his research being lengthy one-on-one interviews.

While the presenter had a PhD and was obviously a very astute researcher in the way he set-up and deployed his reserach methods, I wonder if the real value to his research was simply his ability to make plain and simple contact with his participants so that he understood them on a personal level, and not on a theoretical one. He kept telling his audience not about psychological, anthropological or sociological theories - rather he spoke of how his participants spent hours telling him about the Italian meals they ate that had a significant imprint on their lives. He talked simply about the deep impressions that participants had about Italian food. I'm just wondering if his actual contact with his participants was much more worthwhile than any of the theory involved. Is a good qualitative researcher one that can make contact with participants regardless of whether it is in a group, a depth interview, a projective technique, an expert interview or an on-site interview?

Gestalt Therapy states that any time we manipulate or objectify someone, we devalue them, ourselves and our transactions together. I am really beginning to think that a good qualitative researcher need do nothing more than make contact with participants and experience a shift in themselves and their psyche (as opposed to a shift in the way they think about the results of the research). If the researcher can read and interpret this shift in themselves, then it is likely that they will be well ahead of a researcher that does not make contact but understands theory.